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>If that isn't just the perfect description of politics in the US, I don't know what is. I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on

>If that isn't just the perfect description of politics in the US, I don't know what is. I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on Drugs is a good thing, after all the money wasted, all the lives lost, all the people pointlessly locked up for things half the country can now do openly and legally. Well it does sound like you're equating the War on Drugs to the War on Marijuana. There are other substances that most people really don't think should be accessible to everyone. Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth?

locallost 5y ago
it probably isn't, but bans don't work either or are simply not effective compared to education. the only places where it works are basically dictatorships where people are obedient and don't make waves about anything. if you're a democracy and have "freedom" as a high priority it simply doesn't work to order people what they have a right to smoke, drink or inject. but what you can do is educate people and it's not even expensive compared to the ludicrous amounts of money spent on the war on drugs. countries like Portugal have demonstrated that quite well.
monocasa 5y ago
A better question might be is there more net harm to society from prohibition of those drugs or treating the issue as a medical one? Whether you like it or not the substances are available to everyone either way, as the better part of a century of the war on drugs has taught us.
E-Reverance 5y ago
>>There are other substances that most people really don't think should be accessible to everyone. Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF-RQLP530M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF-RQLP530M
louthy 5y ago
> Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth? Of course it is. The issues that you equate with the image of meth and heroin users are not as a result of the drugs; they’re nearly always a symptom of the problem, often mental health related. Addiction is always a public health issue, no matter what form, whether it’s gambling, food, alcohol, drugs, …
coderintherye 5y ago
>Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth? Yes! And this is what is so fascinating is how well the "drug war" has helped shape societal opinion to think it's not possible to be a functional user. Yet, you may be surprised to learn we have millions of people prescribed Adderall, an amphetamine mixture that is functionally equivalent to methamphetamine. They go about their daily lives on this drug. Likewise, we have beyond millions of people on oxycotin and other functionally equivalent drugs to Heroin going about their daily lives as well. Does this mean they live great lives? Not necessarily, but just as we have millions of functional alcoholics we also have many functional drug users in our country.
- ryneandal 5y ago
  Alcohol is the one that really throws me off. IT's often a malevolent substance yet has none of the stigma of "hard" drugs. Societal acceptance of alcohol, hell even encouragement, has led to countless deaths in this country. Yet it's readily accessible.
- handoflixue 5y ago
  > functionally equivalent to methamphetamine. "The average crystal meth addict uses about 500 mg a day. And they snort it, which probably produces about double the peak plasma level as taking it orally. So they're getting the equivalent of 1000 mg oral amphetamine daily. The average Adderall patient takes 20 mg." https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/drug-users-use-a-lot-of-drugs https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/drug-users-use-a-lot-o... The fact that it's safe to have licensed people prescribe a tightly-controlled substance at 2% of recreational doses is... not at all a good argument for fully unrestricted 100% recreational doses. (I'm still against the war on drugs, for what it's worth)
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    Perhaps educating recreational users about safe dosing is important when it comes to harm reduction? 500mg dose in a non tolerant individual would cause serious issues, they didn't get there overnight.
stickfigure 5y ago
> Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth? Pharmacologically, Adderall is extremely similar to methamphetamine. So, it sure seems like it.
gobrewers14 5y ago
>There are other substances that most people really don't think should be accessible to everyone This is not how a free society operates. I choose what I put into my body and not you or anyone else. If doing so causes me to commit a crime, then punish that crime, but banning drugs because "most people" don't like them is not freedom. If you don't like them, then don't do them. >Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? A free person should be given the opportunity to demonstrate their responsibility instead of it being assumed such responsibility is not possible simply because a majority of the populace finds a substance distasteful.
- belorn 5y ago
  There are other cases where society punish people before they commit a crime. We punish people from driving under the influence, even if the drug has yet to cause an accident. Society and the majority of the populace has generally decided that the risk to society is bad enough to make it illegal. Under the process of law making, a lot of things has been made illegal because it adds a risk to society. From a simplistic perspective it is just risk management, with risk on one side and the cost of the mitigation on the other side. It is not necessary any ideology behind it, and thus the removal of one costly mitigation strategy can have little impact on other strategies that are less costly.
- phvunvx 5y ago
  All drug use has health costs. If healthcare is public or heavily subsidized then the taxpayer has to foot the bill for every unhealthy decision that others make. We can have a free society where people are free to put whatever they want in their bodies, and to suffer the health outcomes and poverty and combination of those things freely as well, if they make bad decisions. What we can't afford as a society is to give free health care and UBI to people who choose to destroy their bodies, at the expense of everyone who chooses against their own interests to be productive members of society, assuming there are enough people who wouldn't choose to live on the dole and do drugs if they were legal.
  - thatswrong0 5y ago
    So should we criminalize being obese as well before implementing tax-payer funded healthcare? Yuck.
pmoriarty 5y ago
"Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user?" Many years ago I read of a long-term study which followed heroin addicted doctors for 20 years, in a society which guaranteed them a supply of clean heroin, and found that as long as their supply was clean and uninterrupted these heroin addicted doctors actually performed slightly better than their non-addicted colleagues, and there were minimal if any negative health consequences. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the study since[1], so take that with a grain of salt.. and heroin is not really my subject of interest so take the following with another grain of salt, but my impression has been that pure heroin is actually not that harmful, especially compared to something like alcohol or cigarettes. The main problem is the potential for unintentional overdose, which really shouldn't be much of a problem with pure heroin (or not much more than many other prescription drugs, whose use doesn't have any negative moral stigma attached to them). If people know the purity and dosage of the drug they're taking they tend not to take so much that it would kill them... not accidentally anyway. It happens, but it also happens plenty of other prescription drugs. There's also addiction, but if you can get a pure, cheap supply (which should be the case where heroin is legal) and it doesn't cause any serious health consequences, then what's the problem? [1] - If anyone else can find this study, I'd be eternally grateful.
quickthrowman 5y ago
If you could get an uninterruptible supply of pure, safe heroin (safety is relative to street drugs containing fentanyl) for $5-10/day, it would be possible to be a responsible heroin user — employed taxpayer or however you want to define ‘responsible’. I used to be a heroin addict, price and availability were the two main obstacles to functioning normally. I’m glad I don’t do heroin any longer (suboxone was a huge help, also stopped that), but if the conditions in the first paragraph were true, it would easily be possible. See Switzerland for example: https://transformdrugs.org/blog/heroin-assisted-treatment-in-switzerland-successfully-regulating-the-supply-and-use-of-a-high-risk-injectable-drug https://transformdrugs.org/blog/heroin-assisted-treatment-in...

locallost 5y ago

it probably isn't, but bans don't work either or are simply not effective compared to education. the only places where it works are basically dictatorships where people are obedient and don't make waves about anything. if you're a democracy and have "freedom" as a high priority it simply doesn't work to order people what they have a right to smoke, drink or inject. but what you can do is educate people and it's not even expensive compared to the ludicrous amounts of money spent on the war on drugs. countries like Portugal have demonstrated that quite well.

monocasa 5y ago

A better question might be is there more net harm to society from prohibition of those drugs or treating the issue as a medical one? Whether you like it or not the substances are available to everyone either way, as the better part of a century of the war on drugs has taught us.

E-Reverance 5y ago

>>There are other substances that most people really don't think should be accessible to everyone. Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF-RQLP530M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF-RQLP530M

louthy 5y ago

> Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth? Of course it is. The issues that you equate with the image of meth and heroin users are not as a result of the drugs; they’re nearly always a symptom of the problem, often mental health related. Addiction is always a public health issue, no matter what form, whether it’s gambling, food, alcohol, drugs, …

coderintherye 5y ago

>Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth? Yes! And this is what is so fascinating is how well the "drug war" has helped shape societal opinion to think it's not possible to be a functional user. Yet, you may be surprised to learn we have millions of people prescribed Adderall, an amphetamine mixture that is functionally equivalent to methamphetamine. They go about their daily lives on this drug. Likewise, we have beyond millions of people on oxycotin and other functionally equivalent drugs to Heroin going about their daily lives as well. Does this mean they live great lives? Not necessarily, but just as we have millions of functional alcoholics we also have many functional drug users in our country.

ryneandal 5y ago
Alcohol is the one that really throws me off. IT's often a malevolent substance yet has none of the stigma of "hard" drugs. Societal acceptance of alcohol, hell even encouragement, has led to countless deaths in this country. Yet it's readily accessible.
handoflixue 5y ago
> functionally equivalent to methamphetamine. "The average crystal meth addict uses about 500 mg a day. And they snort it, which probably produces about double the peak plasma level as taking it orally. So they're getting the equivalent of 1000 mg oral amphetamine daily. The average Adderall patient takes 20 mg." https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/drug-users-use-a-lot-of-drugs https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/drug-users-use-a-lot-o... The fact that it's safe to have licensed people prescribe a tightly-controlled substance at 2% of recreational doses is... not at all a good argument for fully unrestricted 100% recreational doses. (I'm still against the war on drugs, for what it's worth)
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Perhaps educating recreational users about safe dosing is important when it comes to harm reduction? 500mg dose in a non tolerant individual would cause serious issues, they didn't get there overnight.

stickfigure 5y ago

> Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth? Pharmacologically, Adderall is extremely similar to methamphetamine. So, it sure seems like it.

gobrewers14 5y ago

>There are other substances that most people really don't think should be accessible to everyone This is not how a free society operates. I choose what I put into my body and not you or anyone else. If doing so causes me to commit a crime, then punish that crime, but banning drugs because "most people" don't like them is not freedom. If you don't like them, then don't do them. >Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? A free person should be given the opportunity to demonstrate their responsibility instead of it being assumed such responsibility is not possible simply because a majority of the populace finds a substance distasteful.

belorn 5y ago
There are other cases where society punish people before they commit a crime. We punish people from driving under the influence, even if the drug has yet to cause an accident. Society and the majority of the populace has generally decided that the risk to society is bad enough to make it illegal. Under the process of law making, a lot of things has been made illegal because it adds a risk to society. From a simplistic perspective it is just risk management, with risk on one side and the cost of the mitigation on the other side. It is not necessary any ideology behind it, and thus the removal of one costly mitigation strategy can have little impact on other strategies that are less costly.
phvunvx 5y ago
All drug use has health costs. If healthcare is public or heavily subsidized then the taxpayer has to foot the bill for every unhealthy decision that others make. We can have a free society where people are free to put whatever they want in their bodies, and to suffer the health outcomes and poverty and combination of those things freely as well, if they make bad decisions. What we can't afford as a society is to give free health care and UBI to people who choose to destroy their bodies, at the expense of everyone who chooses against their own interests to be productive members of society, assuming there are enough people who wouldn't choose to live on the dole and do drugs if they were legal.
- thatswrong0 5y ago
  So should we criminalize being obese as well before implementing tax-payer funded healthcare? Yuck.

pmoriarty 5y ago

"Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user?" Many years ago I read of a long-term study which followed heroin addicted doctors for 20 years, in a society which guaranteed them a supply of clean heroin, and found that as long as their supply was clean and uninterrupted these heroin addicted doctors actually performed slightly better than their non-addicted colleagues, and there were minimal if any negative health consequences. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the study since[1], so take that with a grain of salt.. and heroin is not really my subject of interest so take the following with another grain of salt, but my impression has been that pure heroin is actually not that harmful, especially compared to something like alcohol or cigarettes. The main problem is the potential for unintentional overdose, which really shouldn't be much of a problem with pure heroin (or not much more than many other prescription drugs, whose use doesn't have any negative moral stigma attached to them). If people know the purity and dosage of the drug they're taking they tend not to take so much that it would kill them... not accidentally anyway. It happens, but it also happens plenty of other prescription drugs. There's also addiction, but if you can get a pure, cheap supply (which should be the case where heroin is legal) and it doesn't cause any serious health consequences, then what's the problem? [1] - If anyone else can find this study, I'd be eternally grateful.

quickthrowman 5y ago

If you could get an uninterruptible supply of pure, safe heroin (safety is relative to street drugs containing fentanyl) for $5-10/day, it would be possible to be a responsible heroin user — employed taxpayer or however you want to define ‘responsible’. I used to be a heroin addict, price and availability were the two main obstacles to functioning normally. I’m glad I don’t do heroin any longer (suboxone was a huge help, also stopped that), but if the conditions in the first paragraph were true, it would easily be possible. See Switzerland for example: https://transformdrugs.org/blog/heroin-assisted-treatment-in-switzerland-successfully-regulating-the-supply-and-use-of-a-high-risk-injectable-drug https://transformdrugs.org/blog/heroin-assisted-treatment-in...